Places for play

International exhibition in the courtyard of Krenovka.

In the last third of the past century, children's playgrounds began to emerge in our country, featuring entertainment and often artistic elements, with contributions from artists and landscape architects (for example, Zdeněk Němeček, Olbram Zoubek, and Eva Kmentová in Prague, Kurt Gebauer in Ostrava, Miroslav Jirava in Krnov, Vladimír Sitta, Tamara Divišková, or Zdeněk Macháček in Brno, Roman Richtermoc and Oldřich Semrád in Hradec Králové). They were often solitary but frequently became icons, and many have recently undergone restoration, albeit under the new status of artistic works rather than play elements. At the end of the 1990s, there was a boom in standardized and not always creative, but primarily materially or aesthetically uninteresting play elements. This average production prompted a reason to reassess the quality production of previous years and also, especially among artist-parents, architects, and landscape architects, a strong need to change the situation. A significant contribution to this is also made by examples of successful implementations abroad, often signed by renowned authors and awarded in international architectural and urban exhibitions that focus on the revitalization of public spaces. The phenomenon of the Adventure playground (a concept of an unfinished playground that children build themselves under the supervision of instructors), which originated in Denmark in the 1940s and has become a common practice in the European context over the following eighty years, is also becoming known among Czech parents, educators, and municipal politicians. Additionally, many scientific playgrounds, educational-sporting elements in nature, as well as skateparks and spaces for parkour are being created.